'KSK Energy, Opto Circuits, Escorts Limited, Deepak Fertilisers top picks'

ET spoke with Nischal Maheshwari, head research, Edelweiss, to find out his current top stock picks.

What are the value picks you would recommend to your clients right now?

It is a pickers' market actually. Very clearly, you can identify stocks that have got value. Midcaps is a basket of stocks that you should be looking at and some of the midcaps that we have recently looked at are KSK Energy, Opto Circuits, Escorts Limited, Deepak Fertilisers. All of them are available at around 10 to 11 times, good strong moment in the businesses, all of them recovery pretty well.

On the banking side, if the consolidation story really works out in next 1-2 years, then small banks like South Indian Bank, Lakshmi Bank and City Union should do well. They all are available at anywhere between 1 to 1.2 times price to book with an ROE of 15% to 16%. There is good amount of value which is available in the market. Obviously, one needs to go and try a bit.